The Dharmalars are back with Producer Ryan. Hear about his adventures on the high sea as well as some episode reactions to "Jughead". We get some great listener calls!
Playlist:
Beneath the 12 Mile Reef - Bernard Herrmann
Time in a Bottle - Jim Croce
Pleasure Unit - Ursula 1000
Click To Listen:
Jughead
55 comments:
good fun watching Ben jerking it (his knee that is).
looking forward to listening to the podcast instead of paying attention at work tomorrow, fellas.
yes!
I'm prepared to be blown away.
Back to the last thread. Thanks to Tha Kid for stating what I was trying to say earlier much better than I was able to. It's the whole affect changing the cause thing that bugs me. Am I correct that you guys ended up agreeing that this is in fact a time paradox? Regardless, it just annoys me a bit.
Just listened to Balph's new podcast. Seems they either didn't catch the Ellie/Eloise connection, or just don't buy into it. Although they did say that they think Ellie is going to end up being Penny's mom. Not sure if that is gonna be true or not. Or if Ellie + Young Chucky Widmore are going to = Faraday. But I will give Ralph some credit. Man and woman fighting in movies and tv usually does equal falling in love.
MB, In efforts to heed your advice. I'm going to challenge your opinion that this current time travel stuff was always intended from the start of the series. Can you point out anything from season one that specifically points to time travel and this current storyline? Hell, even season two. Because right now I look back at season 1 and 2 as a show about a mysterious island with many unexplainable things. Things so vague and ambiguous that down the road could eventually be explained in a multitude of ways. IE: "why is there a polar bear in the middle of a tropical island?" and "what are those whispers? Yes, they are now able to tie it all together with the current story arc. But nothing to me flat out says, "time travel! planned from the get go". I'm not saying that they haven't had a plan or that they have been winging it. I think they worked out a grand scheme story arch, or at least a rough outline of one, probably somewhere around the end of season one and during season 2. And that this outline has changed a bit as they've gone along. I'm not knocking them for it. As even in that case, that's a whole helluva lot more thought and planning than goes on in most shows. The only reason I'm going on so much about this is it seems whenever someone goes, "Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of the time travel or heavy sci-fi turn the show has taken", a lot of the hard core fans reply, "I don't see how you didn't see this coming from the get go". I'm just not seeing that. And I don't care what Damon and Carlton say. You can't convince me that when they sat down with JJ Abrams and ABC, that they said, "Ok, so we got this show about this island and the people from this plane that crashes on it. But eventually a bunch of years down the line, it's going to be all about these two guys (Ben and Widmore) and their huge blood feud. Yeah, you won't meet them for a couple years. But that's the big picture here." Not quite.
Jeez. That got out of hand. Apologies to anyone who bothered reading it all.
Oh, and the show still rocks. I'm just overly focusing on the couple small things that are causing me to raise an eyebrow. The good stuff still far outweighs them. It's not quite Heroes. Although if everybody ends up related and people keep coming back from the dead, I dunno. :P
Oh, and I saw the Walt Tyson chicken nugget commerical. I'm hoping he still has time for the show. I realize this big new chicken nugget career might get in the way. Honestly though, really? I'm guessing he isn't getting too much $ from Lost. And that his work on the show hasn't wowed casting agents too much. You don't see too many people go from tv shows to commercials. It's like Evangeline Lily doing her Live Links commercials now as opposed to before being discovered.
Apologies to anyone who bothered reading it all.
Accepted.
I'd like to see them explain the Hurley Bird with time travel.
Unless it's some super evolved parrot from the future that lived with Hurley right up until he was an old man, then escaped, flew out to see and got picked up by the island during a time/space jump.
Wow. It's time to apply for that writing gig on Heroes.
"flew out to sea"
Tha Kid - you don't edit posts on here. If you fecked it up, it stays fecked.
You can post again and delete, or correct yourself in another post - either way the post count stays the same.
Eloise "ellie" Hawking. How could you guys miss that?
Where does the idea come from that Ms. Hawking shares the same name as Eloise the rat?
I'm certain it's not in the show - is it from one of those dumbhanced episodes?
In fact, where do we even get the name Hawking from? It's clearly her oficial name, but where was it announced as such? In the credits of Flashes?
Jordan, I think the thing that's going to be time travel and season 1 though we won't see it until season 6 is Adam and Eve from Episode 1.6. I also love the idea some floated last week that the coffin Jack finds in White Rabbit, ep. 1.5, is Locke/Bentham's coffin not Christian Shephard's. And of course there's the looping French message from the 2nd part of the pilot. I can't really explain that yet, but it might be coming this season. As long as they keep Rimaldi out of it I'm fine, for now.
Holli
Chris, it said in the pop-ups that Daniel's mom's name is Eloise. I'm pretty ticked about that too. I don't remember how we learned the ring lady's name was Hawking. I think it's in the credits and that Darlton announced it on their podcasts. Again, not so much from the show.
Holli
I'm thinking Daniel named the rat after his Mother. Ms Hawking is his mother. Therefor her name is Eloise Hawking.
I haven't seen the enhanced episodes, I could be wrong.
People who just watch the show and don't get into the ancillary information must get really confused.
Sorry to bring up the comparison AGAIN, but Heroes did this when they introduced a character from the comics into the main show (Hana Gitelman) from the graphic novel spinoffs without any introduction or explanation so that poor sods like me who didn't read them were baffled.
That Faraday's a nutter, isn't he? I wouldn't name anything after my mother. It'd be weird.
It's weird enough that her name is the middle name of the killer from Halloween (easily found).
I thought of a purpose for Charlotte! If Daniel can figure out not only what's going on with her but how to stop it, he can later use it to save people I actually care about like Sawyer when he does whatever it is that's causing the nosebleeds.
I have an idea that somehow in these Jumps Charlotte has changed her past and that's the problem.
Holli
yeah. Tha Kid convinced me. well, convinced me to do more research.
however, a Predestination Paradox seems completely logical in a "one timeline only" time travel story so it doesn't phase me. everything so far still makes "sense" to me. and it mustn't have been the type of paradox that Cuseloff vowed to avoid since they've purposefully created so many. i think, like me, they were thinking of them as seperate things. causality and the like. but, apparently, they're just a different flavor of paradox.
so, some paradox good, Heroes paradox bad. :p
yeah, i don't imagine that they had all the time travel stuff figured out in season 1. i think you're right that they hammered out those kind of ideas in season 2 or 3.
chris, i think Eloise and Mrs Hawking are from the closed captions. but i dont think that people not following as closely as we are will be confused. i think they just wont have put two and two together yet. to them she's just "that time lady from desmond's flashback" and later we'll learn her name and us crazy fans will say "i knew it!!!" and the casual fans will say "oh. hey. that's neat."
So, was the FOTC podcast comment a joke? Cause I was expecting one.
really? no way i am doing another podcast. 3 is too many and i barely do the 3rd one.
Did anyone recognize the voice from the listener from San Diego?
KABLAMo
Our favorite Seaman?
"Our favorite Seaman?"
TWSS
sorry....so sorry.....call me captain tasteless
Semen Speed sounding very much the worse for wear.
Bring back Cue the Music, Ralph.
Speaking of Cue the Music, ralph- and all, check out the In the Mood for Love soundtrack. I would love to hear it featured in some shape or form some day. Thx.
Palmer:
"so, some paradox good, Heroes paradox bad."
Totally agree. Compared to the Heroes "multiple time line" nonsense, this all is extremely sensible. Still don't like the future being needed to make the past happen. But whatever.
Who was the dude from SD? I don't remember as I was half asleep while listening. Do remember some chick who sounded a bit similar to Ms TDot at first. And the guy who burped at the end of his call was hilarious. "Too much coffee". Haha.
The burp was disgusting.
Eloise = Ellie! Damn, I can't believe we missed that. I just thought of Ellie being short for Eleanor and shut my brain down.
I had the same brain fart that Ben did about the girl with the gun on Daniel and the girl in a coma. Something about their curly hair made me think they were the same person.
Jordan,
You've convinced me. You do indeed make a good point that the mysteries in Season 1 could be explained (I think) in a few ways that don't necessarily involve time travel. So, it very well may have been a choice that was made after Season 1 or Season 2. I also totally see the possibility of time travel becoming a lame cop-out explanation (I don't feel that it has become that yet - but talk to me at the end of season 6). Whenever they decided to make time travel part of the equation, it seems to me like they, so far have covered their bases and created a framework and reasoning re: time travel which works. My brain right now is not in a state where I can explain why very thoroughly but basically I don't have a problem with the fact that they are using predestination paradoxes to explain how time travel works - it makes sense to me that certain things throughout time were/are going to happen whether or not a time traveller goes back and facilitates those things happening (they would have happened with or without the time-traveler's intervention). I do think it's asking a little more from the audience to buy into the concept that the universe WON'T LET something happen that's not "supposed to happen" (i.e. the "course correcting" that Ms. Hawking talked about). That is probably the place where I could call possible 'shenanigans' on TPTB.
But then, I'll bet Cuselof would be the first in line to make fun of the idea themselves. I think they realize they are asking the audience to make a significant leap by going with their version of time-travel. Luckily they seem to continue to take pains to NOT make the show just about that, and to give us enough other stuff to chew on. The debates will carry on I'm sure....
Jordan - you've made me fry my brain. I need alcohol.
Is season 5 the first season of Lost where there's been no mini hiatuses between the premiere and season finalé? hmmm
Also. When are we going to get that much anticipated Smoke Monster centric episode? :(
Season 4 was the first smaller season of 16 straight episodes with no breaks. Or was there a missing week in there? I can't remember - ugh
season 4 had a break of 4 weeks inbetween episodes 8 and 9. Oh, and there was a weeks break in between the first and second part of the finalé.
Oh, there were only 14 episodes in season 4 as well. Stupid writer's strike.
AH - THE WRITERS STRIKE!!!
i've blocked the trauma from my memory apparently
there isn't going to be an episode on February 18th. Don't know why
Where'd you see that Andrew?
Holli
Probably because it's my birthday that day.
Happy early birthday Alirio! It looks like that's also D-Day for the digital switchover here in the US. I hope that doesn't result in 3 hours of all networks sending out "Can you see this?" programming.
Holli
Aren't they going to put off the transition? I don't know why. It's going to be either confusion now or confusion later. I don't know how many times I've heard "I don't know why they can't just leave things the way they are." at work.
Alirio, very funny PauseCast as always. "Eh is very endearing. Much better than "Right?" in that cool, hip, new way people do these days. I was watching something the other day that featured a Canadian actor, I'm sure. He had your accent. I thought "He must be from Montreal." I think it was Supernatural.
belated KABLAMO!
I re-watched the episode and it really stood out to me this time when Elle said, "You again," to Faraday and co.
Does Faraday run into her in her past and his future?
Once again I gotta say what's up with the LOST characters flashing off the 50s?
Elle was a burner (hot synonym, not carrying an STD) and it was cool seeing a young Charles Widmore.
Also, Adam and Eve can't be one of the flashing people because their body would keep time traveling even if it died. Right? This brings up a question about the dead Log Carrying Guys and Freighties.
I think that was a mislead Kid. I think we were supposed to think that Ellie had seen Daniel before. Instead she just meant, you, the US Army again though later she figured out that they weren't US Army.
Holli
The makers of LOST know that February 18 is Alirio and Ralph-'s birthdays so it's giving them the night off.
- i noticed the missing week on IMDB when i was specifically checking to see if there would be a hiatus this season
- Great episode of Battlestar Galactica this week. Less talk more rock.
- Woooo Stillers!!!
"there isn't going to be an episode on February 18th. Don't know why"
cause it's my birthday and they wanted to give me a week off from recording.
I talked to Dylan's Peed yesterday and let him know that his observation was awesome! and that my brain this season has been in casual mode. I really had very little to offer on this week's show. It's not that we are getting a hundred answers a minute, but i feel like so many pieces are coming together that there is little left to theorize about.
I mean the whole Elly Elouise thing makes total sense, but it is such a minor thing that it flew under my radar. The pieces are totally all coming together i feel like all we can do now on the show is cater to people who may not watch LOST as close as we do, by showing the links to past episodes (ie-locke telling alpert to go to the hospital) That is an answer to the year long question, Why was alpert at john's birth?
It is gonna be harder and harder to come up with theories with each new episode that airs. LOST is finally gonna stump all the podcasts by giving us less and less questions.
RE: the whole question of whether time travel was a planned part of the show - MediaBlvd Magazine did an interview with Cuselof and specifically asked them "Did you already know that you wanted to do time travel, and then set an end-point, or did setting the end-point make you go, “Okay, let’s time travel”?
And they said:
"Basically, all these ideas, the flash-forwards being the first one that we were able to pull the trigger on, and then entering into the end-game of the story, which involved a significant amount of nonlinear time-travel storytelling, was all part of what our plan was, but we couldn’t start to do any of that stuff until we realized we were working towards an end-point."
So we're kind of both right Jordan - back in Season 1-2 they were pretty much steering clear of getting into any of the current time travel crap because they didn't know when the show was going to end. Then, setting an end date for the show allowed them to bring time travel into the picture as heavily as they have. At least that's how I read it.
This is assuming they're NOT lying to us
I heard there's some kind of superb owl on TV this evening. I'm looking forward to that, I love owls.
Bill Oddie doesn't do any of that Superb Owl tv anymore though since he quit... It won't be as good as before.
Remember that year Bill Oddie got his tit* out before the appearance of the Superb Owl and everyone went completely mental?
* A Great Tit, obviously.
Sorry MB. I don't buy that one bit. Actually, I might. Because to me, it sounds like they are dancing around the question a good deal. Never do they say, "Yes, time travel was the plan. Look at the early seasons and how we set it up." They are like politicians with how they answer those questions. All they're saying in those quotes is that they had some ideas that they were allowed to use once they realized their end date. Never do they say when they thought up the ideas.
I've already said how I think they started getting these ideas sometime after season 2 or so. But the one thing people who want to believe it's all one giant orchestrated plan keep mentioning is the writer's comments about their outline they had at the beginning. I think this is were people are probably misled. Looking back at how the show has unfolded over time. It seems to me that sure, they probably did have an outline. But only in the most loose sense. Said outline early on probably consisted of something like:
season 1 - discover spooky island
season 2 - explore spooky island
filler seasons
future season - get off island future season - get back to island
And even that imo is prob too much as it actually turned out. What I'm saying is, I think their "grand scheme" was either extremely vague, or it was totally different and change a ton along the way.
There's a whole bunch of things that lead me to think this way. Mainly the fact that nothing from the first couple seasons points to these later season storylines at all. But also other smaller things. Just by going back and reviewing how things have transpired. You can pretty much follow the show's time line and compare it with it's critics opinions, and pinpoint the moments when they made certain critical changes. Us fans are a bad gauge of this, because we love anything the show does. But LOTS of people got really tired of the show back during seasons 2 and 3. And accordingly, as certain criticisms began to mount and the general public consensus began to turn, the showrunners made some changes to freshen up the show. IE: flash-forwards, new characters, refocusing of the main storyline, etc. This shouldn't be a knock on the show. As it's something every single tv show on a big network must do to stay on the air. But my point is, I'm fairly certain that along the way, having to accomidate to these things most likely drastically dictated and changed the course of the show. But they've done a pretty good job imo of walking the tight rope.
MB, in the last thread, you said soemthing about "I don't see how the writers could be that good to make up all this stuff on the fly." Well I think exactly the opposite. I don't see how they could've come up with this much material that far in advance. I think they likely had a couple sit downs where they went over as a group, ideas for the future. And at the most, time travel was an idea thrown out along with others.
But as it stands now, time travel sure seems like an extremely convenient way to answer a ton of questions and make the show a whole lot more obvious to casual fans. They had a problem about fans complaining about too many unanswered questions. And they've seemed to solve their problem. It's very hard to believe that it's a coincidence. And that the last 4 years as fans have complained about unanswered questions, that they've been thinking, "Don't worry. You'll get your answers. In season 5, we introduce time traveling and all of a sudden, you'll get a ton of answers. Just be patient."
I dunno. We're probably just going to have to agree to disagree at this point. Call me a cynic. But Carlton and Damon could flat out say, "YES! This was the plan" and I still wouldn't believe them. Why would they tell their rabid fans, "Yeah, we just came up with those ideas a couple days ago." I fully expect them to try to act like they had a big plan. They have insane fans who analyze their every move. They kinda have to.
Jeebus. Sorry for the spam.
Enjoy the blog Brits. Bank holiday here in the US today. Ciao.
I can see your points Jordan. But I think watching LOST and how things are fitting in together like the army finally showing up after Ana Lucia found the knife in early S2 show that they did have a pretty good broad outline.
In comparison I feel like these last episodes of BSG are much more on the fly as evidenced by your need to watch the webisodes to understand what happened this last Friday not to mention the whole final cylon stuff.
I think the LOST people planted a lot of stuff in Seasons 1 and 2 and that they will eventually pay off. There's a lot of stuff they probably won't either, and maybe that's the real heart of it. They threw out a bunch of things and can now pick and choose which direction they definitely want to go given that they know how many more hours they have to dance.
Holli
Jordan - I'd have more respect for Carlton and Damon if they just fessed up and said that they got this idea right around season 3 and they were just treading water in season 2. I'm not fussed that the show has taken such a drastic change to the first three seasons, i'm actually quite loving it.
Chris - Oh, I remember that wardrobe "malfunction". I suppose it didn't help that he had that really horrible nipple ring on in the shape of two badgers fornicating.
I'm amazed that they've kept LOST together at all with the number of times they've had to change major character arcs because certain actors didn't like Hawaii or got caught drink driving.
Jordan,
I wasn't clear in explaining my reason for using that quote. I wasn't actually trying to further disprove you, I think we partially agree. My point was that I think you are right that they didn't know exactly what the f**k they were going to do when they had an indefinite amount of episodes ahead of them, and I think Damon used the term "non-linear" storytelling precisely because they didn't know in the beginning that they were going to have the island skipping around like it is - only that the island's story went way beyond a plane crash and it's survivors. I think the original outline was indeed very vague and they only had certain major elements and plot points to work with and fill in the blanks around - and they've said this before when asked whether they have a plan. I remember one of them mentioning that Locke seeing the light turn on in the Swan hatch was one of those plot points (I do not have a link/reference, sorry). So I totally agree that most of the storylines and arcs have been inventions along the way, and indeed they've "done a pretty good job of walking the tight rope".
I also think that they may not have had the idea early on that the 815ers (+ other added characters) specifically were going to be skipping through time on this island. But, to be contrary for a moment, I have to say that by introducing a 16 year old looping message (+ accompanying crazy French woman who has a mysterious past), two skeletons which Jack estimates are 40-50 years old in the caves, a 19th century slave ship, a 30+ year old disappeared research organization, evidence (the knife) that the U.S. army visited the island (Ana Lucia thought 20 years ago), and the remains of a four-toed statue reminiscent of the Colossus, we are given some foreshadowing that non-linear storytelling is a possibility in future episodes - how it's going to be done was a mystery, but the groundwork for possibly including time travel in the show was definitely laid. Understand - I'm NOT saying these things point definitively to time travel being the only way to explore them, but I don't think you can say that nothing in Season 1 and 2 COULD be seen as pointing to time travel. Also, I'm not sure that the time-travel storytelling they are doing is an "extremely convenient way to answer a ton of questions and make the show a whole lot more obvious to casual fans." It seems like it would confuse the hell out of a casual or first time viewer.
But I CAN imagine that many people thought those elements were maybe just going to be part of the backstory of the island, told through narrative or other ways that didn't directly involve our protagonists' involvement or experience - that was another possibility.
The bottom line is we're probably never going to know what went on in the writers room, so you may be right about Cuselof - they may or may not be lying to us.
....and I'm spent. good night blogspotica.
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